IOC President Thomas Bach said Saturday the “hate speech” directed at boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting at the Paris Olympics is “totally unacceptable.”
“We will not take part in a politically motivated cultural war,” Bach said at a news briefing
Khelif of Algeria and Lin of Taiwan have been subjected to days of global scrutiny about their gender. Both women were disqualified at the 2023 world championships.
The Russian-led International Boxing Association — which has been banished from the Olympics by the IOC in a yearslong dispute — removed them from the worlds 16 months ago in India citing gender-based tests that are still unspecified and unproven.
WATCH | Algeria’s Khelif cruises past Italy’s Carini in Olympic women’s boxing round of 16:
Angela Carini stopped her fight against Algeria’s Imane Khelif just 46 seconds into the Round of 16 bout. Khelif is one of two boxers permitted to fight at the Olympics despite being disqualified from the women’s world championships last year for failing testosterone and gender eligibility tests.
“We have two boxers who are born as women, who have been raised as women, who have a passport as a woman and have competed for many years as women,” Bach said. “Some want to own a definition of who is a women.”
Both Khelif and Lin competed at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and did not win medals.
WATCH | Former IOC medical adviser weighs in on women’s Olympic boxing discussion:
Joanna Harper, a former medical adviser to the IOC, weighs in on the discussion involving Algerian boxer Imane Khelif — who was ruled eligible to compete in the women’s welterweight event at the Paris Olympics but had previously failed International Boxing Association (IBA) eligibility rules over elevated testosterone levels.
Source Agencies
